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Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Motherhood and Internal Migration in Quintana Roo, Mexico

During my thesis research in the
communities of Saban and Huay Max, located in the state of Quintana Roo,
Mexico, I watched how children from three different familial units living on
the same housing lot were constantly reorganized and re-circulated as adult
family members came and went. For many rural communities in Quintana Roo,
Mexico, child circulation is taking on a new meaning as many young women are
joining men and now choosing to migrate out of the community in search of work
in tourist and urban centers. The research for this essay grew out of my focus
on how young migrant women negotiate the culturally prescribed role of
motherhood versus the complex demands they face as economic providers. This
essay explores how the dual pressures of economics and relocation are affecting
Yucatec Maya mothers, fathers, and children.

Quintana Roo is a critical part
of the tourism development boom that has taken place throughout Mexico since
the early 1970s (see Clancy 2001; Castellanos 2010). While tourism development
throughout the region generates both revenue and employment, there are also
many serious negative social and environmental repercussions to this pervasive
form of development (Sanchez-Gil et al 2004:588; Clancy 2001; Hiernaux 1999;
Castellanos 2010). Tourism development in Quintana Roo has led to a dramatic
increase of internal migration to the coastal regions, which has resulted in
tremendous population concentrations that surround well-known destinations such
as Cancun. In many of the households that I have encountered over the last
several years, a vast majority had at least one member of the family who
migrated out to tourists zones in search of work.

The social effects and impacts of
tourism development are often deeply gendered (Casellas and Holcomb 2001).
Although tourism may produce positive and/or negative consequences for women,
Casellas and Holcomb point out that the employment women gain from tourism,
among other benefits, can improve women’s economic and social positions within
their respective communities (2001:162).

In Saban and Huay Max, most men
and some women leave the community on a regular basis in search of wages and
work—either weekly, monthly, or for longer periods of time—while their children
stay behind. Ramon*, a middle aged father from Huay Max, explained what was
driving the need for many men and women to leave the community:

There is no work here. We have to
leave and find work in places like Playa [del Carmen] and Cancun in order to
bring back money to pay for our children’s clothes and food.

Many other parents echoed Ramon’s
sentiments that temporary out-migration was motivated by the need to fulfill
parental and familial obligations.
This lack of economic opportunities is not an isolated issue; it is a
problem faced by many families in the region.

Specifically, in rural Quintana
Roo, children are being circulated because of the challenging situations that
many women and their families face. In the past few decades it has
traditionally been males who have been pushed to find work outside of the local
community; but this trend has been drastically modified, as women are now
starting to migrate out of their natal communities in search of a way to
further supplement their family incomes. The main factor driving this
out-migration is economic; however ecological changes to the environment have
further affected rural communities’ economic needs. In response to these
pressures, there are two primary factors that enable rural to urban migration
for women in Quintana Roo: access to higher education and a thriving tourist
economy.

Emily Walmsley argues that when
rural regions become subsumed within wider global markets, “earlier practices
of fostering and kinship are continually being shaped by new economic and
social pressures” (2008:174). As Walmsley (2008) and Jessaca Leinaweaver (2007)
demonstrate in their research, the practice of fostering or child circulation
also serves as a survival strategy during times of economic crisis and
reinforces kinship ties. In response, families are utilizing a highly dynamic
and flexible family structure to facilitate child rearing. In rural Quintana
Roo, children whose parents migrate out for work are moved around and primarily
sent to live with close extended kin like older sisters, aunts, or
grandparents. Although mothers and their husbands are the primary decision
makers in determining the fate of the child, children also have a say as to
where they choose to live. Sometimes it is the child’s desire to stay behind
with family that influences the way in which they are circulated. Such
occurrences are illustrative of not only the dynamic nature of the family unit,
but also of the fluidity and flexibility of individual agency.

The majority of the residents of
Saban and Huay Max are subsistence agriculturalists that rely on getting their
main food staples from their milpa
(agricultural plot). The families in the region have to constantly fight with
environmental elements such as drought, floods, and hurricanes. In 2005,
Hurricane Wilma (the strongest tropical cyclone on record in the Atlantic
basin) had devastating effects throughout the peninsula in particular along the
coast of Quintana Roo. Those effects were also felt close to home in both Saban
and Huay Max with the complete loss of harvest due to floods and the salting of
the fields caused by rainwater mixed with ocean water. During the summer of
2008 the communities once again completely lost their harvests due to drought.
I was in these communities in early September when the rains came just two
weeks too late. Nothing could be done; the crops dried out and the years’ work
was lost.

After losing the harvest for the
sixth year in a row and experiencing increasing food costs, the economic
realities and hardships are undeniable and often seemingly insurmountable for
many community members. As a result, many people are temporarily diversifying
their modes of subsistence and choosing to migrate out in larger numbers than
in past years to help supplement the costs of food, shelter, and clothing for
their families. Many new migrants are now women. The majority of these women
are in their late teens to late twenties. Those who are married usually have
children; these children are often left behind with extended kin while the
mothers migrate out in search of work. Because the majority of women who leave
the community in search of work are of reproductive age, the well-being and
social reproduction of children whose mothers migrate out is an issue of great
importance.

As women negotiate their absence
within their families they incorporate various strategies to help protect their
children’s emotional and physical wellbeing. As much as mothers stated that
they would like to be with their children, many expressed their feeling that
the safety and well-being of their children is more important than their own
personal desires, sense of identity, and fulfillment of traditional gender
roles.

Maribel, a 30-year-old mother who
has steadily migrated out for work over the last five years, told me during an
interview how difficult it was for her to be away from her children. She
explained that she had wanted them to stay and live with her (and her husband)
in the city, but knew that they wanted to be back in the pueblo. She understood
that her children were happier in the pueblo with all of their friends and
family and knew that forcefully making them relocate would have devastating
effects on them. However, in choosing to leave her children behind, Maribel
felt a sense of loss. Due to her extended migration out of the community,
Maribel’s youngest child would sometimes accidentally call her mother “aunt”,
which Maribel said hurt her sense of motherhood and the value that she had in
the lives of her children. In Maribel’s case, motherhood meant economically
providing for her children rather than participating in their daily care.

Liliana is the main economic
provider in her household; she is one of the few women fortunate to have been
able to make a living working in the community. Liliana has helped raise all
three of her bother Jose’s children as well as the oldest son of her brother
Mario. Liliana states that the main reason that the children don’t migrate out
with their parents is because they are freer back in the pueblo than when they
are in the city. She went on to say,

here in the
pueblo they can run around and play with other children in the streets. They
can stay out all day if they want to. Here they are not confined to a room or a
small yard. In the cities it is not safe for children to walk or play around in
the streets and that’s why they have to stay inside all day. The children don’t
like it and that’s why they choose to stay in the pueblo.

The two youngest children that
Liliana looks after are four and six, and they have openly expressed their
desire to remain in the pueblo. To them the pueblo is their home, where they
feel comfortable and safe surrounded by everything they know including their
family and friends. They both had the opportunity to live in Chetumal, the
capital city of Quintana Roo, with their parents but chose to return to the
freedom of pueblo life were they were are able to play and wander around all
day. Moving to urban cities, while sometimes exciting for children, can also be
a lonely and shocking experience. For that reason, children often decide to
stay in their natal community, where the comfort of routine, friends, familiar
places, and family is readily available.

Community ties are clearly
important for children, just as they are for adults. Santiago, Liliana’s
teenage nephew said that unlike his younger brother and two older sisters, he
chose to stay behind because he didn’t want to leave all of his friends. Access
to greater educational opportunities and resources were not significant factors
influencing Santiago’s ultimate decision to stay in the community; for him the
freedom he had in the pueblo, as well as his established relationships with
friends and family, proved to be more important. I watched Santiago frequently
move in and out of the house. He spent most of his time outside hanging out
around the plaza, visiting the internet café, picking up a game of futbol, or
visiting with various friends.

Stepping back and looking at how
a rural community attempts to cope with increasing economic pressures through
the migration of men, and now women, to tourist and urban centers demonstrates
the powerful ways in which economic pressures can move bodies. It also
highlights the creative and flexible ways in which families adapt to these
pressures. In the case of rural Quintana Roo, the out-migration of women has
further affected the lives of children, and reshaped socially acceptable norms
about how children are positioned within larger family units. For families
facing economic difficulties in Saban and Huay Max, the practice of child
circulation enables women who migrate out for work to rely on kin relatives
like their mothers, sisters, sister-in-laws, or older daughters to help raise
their children and provide them with a better quality of life. This results in
the establishment of closer kinship ties through the sharing of mothering.

Here
child circulation functions as a survival and betterment strategy as children
are moved and transferred between households. Yet, as Maribel’s experiences
demonstrate, female out-migration and the subsequent circulation of children can have difficult social costs for families in places like rural
Yucatan. This reality underscores
the need to understand the implications of globalization beyond macro-economic
perspectives. By analyzing how economic pressures affect the intimate
relationships of family and motherhood, we gain a much deeper—and more complex—understanding
of the local social meanings and impacts of wider political and economic processes.